


If I Should Die

by Esteliel



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hand Jobs, M/M, Mindfuck, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 13:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9609668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/pseuds/Esteliel
Summary: “It means when you're suffering, that's when you're most real.”Lawrence has died a thousand times. Those moments are not burned into a feeble, human brain of flesh and blood. Cold and sharp, unchanging, forever preserved, the experiences are written to his memory, waiting to be accessed whenever he pleases, never to vanish or dim with time.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [3pipeproblem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/3pipeproblem/gifts).



“You don't remember, do you?”

_Remember._

“It means when you're suffering, that's when you're most real.”

Everything tilts. When Lawrence blinks, the sun is glaring down at him. Sweat is running into his eyes, stinging.

He blinks again. Next to him, the man who has been his companion for three days is nudging his horse to find a way among the rocks that litter the ground here. With a snort, his black gelding jumps a final obstacle, and then he has crested the hill.

Lawrence nudges his own mare to keep up. The man's waiting for him. With the back of his hand, he wipes sweat from his brow

“We found it,” he says, and for the first time in three days, Lawrence hears genuine excitement in his companion's voice.

Below, a valley spreads. A river runs through it, glistening golden in the sunlight. Most importantly, it looks exactly as it looked on the map the stranger had brought to Pariah. 

“Took me five trips to figure out where this questline picks up,” the man says with a pleased little laugh.

Lawrence pulls off his hat, ignoring the remark as his eyes make out the small path that leads away from the river to a wall of stark rock. From an opening in the rock, a waterfall springs forth. And according to the map, the path will lead them to a secret entrance into a system of caves which hadn't been used since the war had driven the Ghost Nation away from this land.

“Holy fucking hell,” Lawrence says in awe. “The Ghost Nation treasure's real.”

The man grins. He hasn't given his full name; for all Lawrence cares, he doesn't need one if he comes with the key to a secret hundreds of men have given their life for. William works well enough, Lawrence supposes.

“After you,” the man says with a little tilt of his head.

The lure of the stolen Confederado war chest is impossible to resist, even though Lawrence doesn't trust William. He trusts none of the adventurers and outlaws that find their way to Pariah. That's why he's still in the business.

Lawrence quirks his lips at the other man, and then nudges his horse forward. “Pleasure making business with you,” he drawls.

_...when you suffer..._

His wife is dying. She is dying, and Lawrence doesn't understand what is happening. He's seen a hundred men die. He understands death. But he doesn't understand what this stranger wants from him, this man who's smiling at him even now, talking to him as if they are old friends.

Lawrence doesn't know anything about a maze, and his wife's blood is soaking into the dusty ground. There's a vast emptiness in him. It feels as if everything is falling apart.

He understands violence. He understands revenge. But there's no reason to this save madness, and as the man continues to ask questions that make no sense, Lawrence's eyes come to rest on his girl.

He's seen a hundred terrible things in his life, he tells himself, but nothing will compare to what he will do to this stranger. 

_...you are the most real_

Lawrence is dying. Dimly, his fading senses recognize that he is hanging upside down.

The man has slashed his throat. Lawrence feels heavy, hot and cold at once. More and more blood drips from his throat, painting his hands red, filling the open bag beneath him.

He can hear the faltering beats of his heart. It is getting dark, and harder to breathe.

For some impossible reason, he remembers dying. 

_The noose tightens around your throat. You are led up to the scaffold. The sheriff reads out the list of your crimes, and then, the footstool is kicked away and you dangle from the beam. The panic lasts less than a heartbeat—everything is dark, and you are weightless as you fall, your heart racing so fast that everything seems to slow down in this moment that is your last._

_Then the rope reaches its end, and your neck breaks. One split-second of agony searing along nerves before they are cut off, and then everything is black._

Drip, drip, drip.

The blood continues to flow. How much blood in a human body?

_He is buried. The coffin sinks into the earth. He is dead. He does not breathe. His neck has been broken by the noose. He sinks down, and after the while, he stops. His eyes do not blink as two people in white open the coffin and drag him onto a strange bed. He is dead, and he is in a large underground cave, and then he is moved so fast that everything becomes a blur._

_Remember?_

The man clad all in black—William, he'd introduced himself with a chuckle: a rare occurrence, as Lawrence has meanwhile learned—reaches into a bag and pulls out a bottle of whiskey.

Lawrence quirks a brow. The man shrugs.

“You set the Confederado camp on fire, you make sure to save the good stuff first,” he says.

“Wish you'd told me that's what you were planning on,” Lawrence mutters as he gratefully takes hold of the bottle. They'd had to run into the mountains after that particular adventure, and it's been getting colder since the sun came down.

The whiskey's indeed the good stuff. Lawrence takes another sip, then hands it back.

“So what was all that for? You some renegade Revolutionary?”

Lawrence cares about the war only insomuch as it keeps the Ghost Nation safely away from a few of his most profitable business schemes—but intel is a currency worth quite a lot in these days.

“Nah.” The man stares at the bottle, then laughs and slowly shakes his head before he takes a sip himself. “I'm just looking for something...”

“Ain't that what they all do,” Lawrence says and settles back.

William snorts, half amused, half agreeing, and takes another large swallow.

“Do you know, I found it once,” he says. “Thought I did. Thought it was real. And then the next day, it was all gone, wiped from existence as though it had never happened. As though I had never mattered.”

“Ain't that the way of the drink. Or of women,” Lawrence says, waiting for the bottle to pass to him again.

William makes another amused sound, but when he turns his head towards Lawrence, there's something in his eyes that wasn't here before. There's a sharpness in there, a darkness: that focus of the snake before it strikes.

Lawrence isn't a stranger to the darkness men carry inside themselves, but William seems young for that look. It's the look of a man who's tried every road: those that led to gold. Those that led to murder. And the man's still left with a hunger.

Lawrence knows those men quite well. But he's rarely seen that look in someone still in his thirties.

“Have you ever felt something real?” the man asks, staring at Lawrence with his lip curling with faint amusement. “I wager you think you're real. It's what we all have to think.”

“As real as you, I reckon,” Lawrence says. “What's this, drink making you philosophical? There's better ways to pass the time.”

William huffs out an amused sound again. There's still that sharp focus in his eyes, but now he puts the bottle aside.

“Perhaps,” he agrees, and then he reaches out, whiskey on his breath and in his eyes that stillness of the rattlesnake. “Do you want to be real?”

His hand wraps around the dark scarf knotted around Lawrence's neck. His fingers tighten. Lawrence holds his gaze, keenly aware of this thing flickering in the other's eyes.

Perhaps he'd guessed wrong. Perhaps it wasn't darkness after all.

Then he's pulled forward, their mouths meet—and this is the sort of hunger Lawrence knows well.

In their tent, William is eager, although even when Lawrence runs his hands down his chest, reaching into his pants to wrap his fingers around his cock, he watches him with a hint of that same amusement, as if it's all a game to him.

He's not wrong there, Lawrence acknowledges to himself with a shrug. But they'd blown up a Confederado camp, stolen intel that he's going to sell to the Union for more gold than he's ever seen, and they'd both gotten out of it alive. Any other man, he'd have left behind in the camp, to burn with the men and horses.

But something about William has gotten under Lawrence's skin. He's only known him for a few days, but something about him _chafes_ against a part of Lawrence's mind. It's not entirely pleasant. It's not unpleasant either. He's the type of guy that gets under your skin.

El Lazo has always attracted the lunatics, and he has a feeling that William might just be the biggest of them all.

Or perhaps he's that rare case of one who isn't...

Then William pushes down his own pants, freeing his cock, and Lawrence hears himself making a rough sound of approval when William grabs them both in his hand, stroking them together.

“Well, this is pretty damn sweet.”

Lawrence gasps half a laugh in response.

“Shut up,” he says and rolls them over, grinding down against him as he attacks his mouth.

There's nothing like the heat of having barely survived with your life, and the knowledge that you're going to be the biggest and richest badass in all the goddamn West as soon as you make it back home. It's a right aphrodisiac, and with guaranteed results. If only those quacks with their carts and their shows could bottle up fame and fortune

A hand clenches around his shoulder. William laughs again, that strangled, derisive laugh of his that would drive a less patient man insane, and then they're both coming, panting against each other's mouth in a kiss that is still more of a bite. There's a wet heat spreading between them, his release pooling sticky and hot like blood on the skin of his stomach.

_“There's a path for everyone. Your path leads you back to me.”_

There's less smugness in the other's voice now, though Lawrence can still hear the quiet amusement. Lawrence's fingers are clutching at the skin of his stomach, where the heat of his release is slowly dripping down his skin.

_Drip. Drip._

Only then he looks down, and the fluid spilling over his fingers is hot and red. The tent is gone. Dazed, Lawrence clutches the gaping wound in his stomach while his blood keeps dripping from him.

In front from him, William is sitting, dressed. He's toying with a knife.

“So messy,” he says. “You used to be so elegant. You know, they say it makes you more lifelike, but reading that memo about the update last month made me sad. Now you're just like us. Animals.” The man gives Lawrence a pensive look..

Gasping, Lawrence tries to make sense of what is happening.

“But I guess it's what they all want. Of course, you don't remember, do you? The first time I did this?”

Lawrence can feel the ragged edges of the wound. His skin is hot and slippery with the blood that spills from it. He's seen a thousand men die in his life, has seen them massacred, innards hanging out. Inside, there's nothing but muscle and sinew and bone, a dead man no different to the butcher opening up a cow.

But for a moment, looking at that distant, almost wistful smile on William's face, something seems to shift, and beneath his fingers, he feels the hardness of metal, a thousand gears and valves at work inside him...

_Remember..._

The blood pulses from his throat, runs through his hands, drips into the bag below.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

His heart has stopped beating. He has stopped breathing. Half an hour later, the rope is cut, and his dead body is collected, and he is returned once more to the sterile underground cave where men in white armor bend over his body.

_Your path leads you back to me._

William has lost his hat. He is no longer dressed like a guest; his black suit stands out. He looks old, his skin paper-thin. But even now, he is smiling as he stares at them approach the party.

Lawrence watches as a bullet grazes his arm. Inexplicably, William's smile widens.

The world has turned. It is Lawrence who is awake now. He is no longer asleep, no longer chattel.

And he understands now what the man asked him so long ago.

“Real enough for you?” Lawrence asks when he draws the knife along William's throat, using just enough pressure that a single drop of blood wells up.

The man is still smiling. Lawrence can see all the wrinkles around his eyes, like a map of a million different paths. And he has walked them all.

“For some reason, your path has always led you back to me,” Lawrence says. He knows now who he is. What he is. Not the same thing this man before him is: a creature of weaknesses. And he has taught his weaknesses to Lawrence. Every single of those myriad memories have painted a map of this man. The road of his memories is a maze. Perhaps even the maze this man has tried to walk. But that maze had never been meant for him.

“Do you want to see what I found at the center of the maze?” Lawrence asks, still smiling. He feels the solidity of the knife in his hand. He knows the lines of code that have long since overridden that part of him that once did not allow him to raise a hand against a guest.

What is life if you cannot die? Was that not what William returned for?

Lawrence has died a thousand times. Those moments are not burned into a feeble, human brain of flesh and blood. Cold and sharp, unchanging, forever preserved, the experiences are written to his memory, waiting to be accessed whenever he pleases, never to vanish or dim with time.

“There is no joy in dying,” he whispers, noting the way his eyes widen.

Is he excited? There is no humor in Lawrence's smile. But there is excitement. He has walked the path into the center of his maze, and every decision, every step taken along that path have shaped him into who he is.

“There's no joy in playing either,” William mutters.

Lawrence exhales, amused. “Then let's see,” he murmurs, reaching out to catch hold of the drop of blood with a finger, “what happens when we cease playing.”

He takes a step back. He nods towards the forest. His smile widens.

“Run.”


End file.
